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Chris Weidner: A frozen path to enlightenment — one climber's journey

By Chris Weidner

For the Camera

Posted:
02/23/2016 07:40:14 PM MST

Updated:
02/23/2016 07:54:09 PM MST

With thin ice over rock, the first pitch of All Mixed Up (WI4) in Rocky Mountain National Park is similar to the terrain in Office's Gulch, where Ricky fell 60 feet to the ground. (Chris Weidner / Courtesy photo)

Chris Weidner, Wicked Gravity

Four winters ago "Ricky" was scaling a frozen waterfall in Officer's Gulch above I-70, ropeless and alone. Sixty feet up he crested a thinly-iced slab, where his ice tools scratched granite beneath the surface.

"I thought I was on track for a glorious training day in the Rocky Mountains," the climber from Boulder later told me. He had even chosen the bar in Frisco where he would stop that evening for a celebratory beer, "to relish living the dream."

Suddenly, one of his tools ripped through the veneer of ice, throwing him off-balance. He teetered in place trying to lean forward, but it was too late.

Time slowed; he tumbled backward.

"In the initial moments of the fall," he said, "I knew, without doubt, that life on Earth was over for me."

I met Ricky three years ago in the dirt lot across from the Eldorado Corner Market, while waiting for our respective climbing partners. I was drawn to his all-or-nothing vibe: a simple, profound passion for life.

Within days, we had shared our life stories.

A year and a half before his fall, in May 2010, Ricky had endured a "heinous breakup" after his live-in girlfriend admitted to cheating on him with several guys.

"I would drive to work early and sit in my van, feeling like walls were closing in," he said. "I could barely function day-to-day."

He turned to climbing, his decade-long addiction, only this time it utterly consumed him. "I was bouldering, soloing, plugging gear, clipping bolts, aiding," he said. "Nothing crazy hard, but I was always up on something, somewhere."

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He lost an alarming amount of weight. "I don't know if it was all the climbing or my diet of coffee and cigarettes," he said. "Nothing else mattered."

He soloed the Flatirons, timing his ascents and breaking his own records.

Sometimes he'd hike several miles at Lumpy Ridge, above Estes Park, without shoes. He'd climb barefoot, chalkless — and ropeless. If he passed a spacious ledge on route he would often return to it later and spend the night there by himself.

For three and a half months, he climbed every single day.

"It wasn't about facing death, or pushing to the end because I had nothing to live for or anything. I just felt super free all of a sudden, yet too claustrophobic to be in town, around people," he said.

"Climbing kept me alive."

But by late August he couldn't keep up his frenetic escapism. As the days shortened, Ricky settled into a gloomy yet sustainable lifestyle. "I was alone that winter dealing with remnants of my heartbreak," he said.

Ice climbing gave him meaning; the mountains became his church. "I was looking for frozen paths to enlightenment," he said.

More than a year later, as Ricky hurtled down the cliff in slow motion, he recalled, "I saw family and friends, and the face of my sweetheart who was away on vacation. I apologized to all of them and sent them my loving energy.

"I peacefully waited for the lights to be turned out during one of the many seconds spent tumbling down that mountain. I can even remember growing shock(ed), as after each impact I remained conscious.

"And then the dust settled. My fall was over."

Snow at the base of the route must have cushioned his landing, because, miraculously, Ricky's injuries were minor.

His transformation was not.

"Since the accident I learned to connect with people once again," he said (as I discovered in that parking lot three years ago).

Today, he still fights doubt and fear — ghosts from his accident. "But I push through and keep on climbing," he said. "One thing is clearer to me than ever: the mountains are where I belong. It is there, where I am nothing, that I am baptized into something greater."

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